The FAEX WD Black (2010) is nearly four years old and has been replaced by the WD Black FZEX (2013). Comparing the FAEX and FZEX models shows that the newer FZEX model is around 11% faster on average. The main performance improvements are in the area of sequential writes where the newer FZEX is 30% faster (148 vs 114 MB/s). As a new purchase, the FAEX would have to come at a significant discount to the newer FZEX in order to make it worth considering. The FAEX has a reasonably well-rounded performance profile with above average 4K speeds but it's overpriced and lags the group leaders in terms of value for money. [Nov '12HDrivePro]

The 1TB Seagate Barracuda 2016 (ST1000DM010) has an impressive performance profile. With Sequential read/writes averaging 173 and 159 MBps respectively, the Barracuda can make short work of even moderately large backups. The small file (4K) performance profile is less impressive but still adequate with average read/writes coming in at 0.87 and 1.53 MBps respectively. For use as OS drives, rotational disks are quickly loosing market share to SSDs which offer orders of magnitude faster 4k read/write speeds. On the other hand cheap TLC based SSDs often have slower sustained write speeds than their rotational counterparts. Reasonably good overall performance can be achieved by using a TLC SSD to host the OS and a larger rotational drive such as the Barracuda for backups and media files. Larger capacity variants of this drive offer both better performance and better value for money. [Feb '17HDrivePro]

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We calculate effective speed which measures performance for typical consumers. Effective speed is adjusted by current cost per GB to yield value for money. Our calculated values are checked against thousands of individual user ratings. The customizable table below combines these factors to bring you the definitive list of top HDDs. [HDrivePro]

Welcome to our freeware PC speed test tool. UserBenchmark will test your PC and compare the results to other users with the same components. You can quickly size up your PC, identify hardware problems and explore the best upgrades.